Strategist: Twin Val'kyr

Long time no see! I know you haven't seen the Faction Champions guide yet - and frankly, I am not looking forward to it. My guild did fairly well this week (not a single wipe until Anub'arak, and even then only a few), but I am still not feeling confident enough to provide detailed description of that third encounter. Probably because it's so chaotic, you can't really grab a strategy and execute it every time by the letter, and expect it to work. So expect Anub'arak, and maybe even some Heroic notions before the Faction Champions. I also accept suggestions on my email (found in my profile) as to how to deal with them.

Room Overview & Positioning

Here is how the room looks like - portals added.

You can see the gate where the bosses come from there on the upper side of the image. For purposes of this guide, I will refer to it as "up", the left side will be "left", and the right side - "right. When you actually enter the instance and look at the minimap, the gate is going to be on the western (left) side of the map, so my "left" is actually south, and my "right" - north. But don't bother with those. There is only "left" and "right" of the gate.

You want to split your DPS, tanks and healers equally between the two bosses. Yes, you could have all the DPS on one side, but doing so will be a game of luck (you will depend on the special abilities selection). Only two tanks are needed - one per boss. The bosses don't hit hard either - for about half of what a decently hitting raid boss (Vezax) would smack for, so healing the tanks shouldn't be an issue either.

When you split your raid and spawn the bosses (they don't engage unless you intentionally pull them), have your left group click the Light portal down there, and the right group - the Dark one. Healers can grab the opposite color of their group - it'll make Vortexes easier (i.e. left healers get Dark Essence, right healers get Light). When everybody is done have your tanks run up and tank the bosses by the two portals in the upper side of the room (the two closer to the gate). Melee DPS should surround the boss they are attacking, and casters should spread out, staying on their side of the room. That's for positioning...

Strategy

So you have your raid split in two similar halves. The bosses are present, you've gained your Essence (Light - left, Dark - right) and you are ready to begin.

Most of the fight is going to be just tank 'n' spank. Twin Spike is hardly anything to fret over, even though the Val'kyr don't shy off using it. And for the majority of the fight, that's all the Twins will do. When things get trickier is when they decide to use a special ability. Apparently there is a shared cooldown on their abilities, which will be used approximately once every 45 seconds. This means you may get 45 seconds between two special abilities, you might get 50, but it will always be around those numbers. And here are the two special abilities either boss can cast:

Shield + Twin Pact: First the caster will shield herself with a shield of the same color as her essence. The shield will absorb finite amount of damage and prevent interruption. And the reason you want to burst it and interrupt the boss is because she will cast a 15-second Twin's Pact, which will heal the bosses for 20% of their maximum combined health. The way you deal with it, is by having all the DPS switch to the shielded Val'kyr... kind of. The DPS on the non-shielded boss will have to change their essence by clicking the portal right next to their Val'kyr, and then running over to the shielded one and helping. Everybody who can interrupt should be ready to do so as soon as the shield goes down. Tanks and Healers need not do anything, and the DPS who were on the shielded boss originally don't need to do anything either - other than keep on DPSing that is. After the Shield is down, the people that switched sides should click on the portal next to the Val'kyr that was just shielded so they can regain their original Essence, and then go back to their starting boss.

Vortex: Vortex is somewhat easier to handle than Twin Pact. I guess because you need to react if your boss does something (as opposed to tracking what the other boss is doing, which is the case with Twin Pact). Regardless, here's what he spell does: the boss will initiate an 8-second cast of Vortex of the same color as the boss' essence (Light Vortex for Fjola on the right, Dark Vortex for Eydis on the left). After the 8 seconds, she will channel a pulsing AoE for 5 seconds, inflicting quite a bit of damage every second... to targets of the opposite color. So Fjola will hurt Dark Essenced people, and Eydis will hurt Light ones. The solution to this - if your Val'kyr casts Vortex, click the portal next to her, so you can change essence, and then run back to the essence portal you grabbed your original color at. Or run to the other boss, but I doubt that'll change anything, as far as DPS goes. So change color, run back and be ready to gain your original color as soon as the 5 pulses are gone. You will not take damage if you do this properly, and you will gain ~40 stacks of .

So here is a shorter version, for quick remembering, macros and raid tips:

Your Val'kyr: Shield - Proceed normally, be ready to interrupt.

Your Val'kyr: Vortex - Change color, run back, get ready to change color again as soon as Vortex pulses are gone.

Other Val'kyr: Shield - Change color, run over and DPS her, being ready to interrupt. Don't forget to change color again before you go back to your side.

Other Val'kyr: Vortex - Proceed normally.

This being said, there is one more thing you can keep in mind in order to optimize your performance. The Twins will go through a full "cycle" of all four abilities before they start repeating. That is, if you see Light Shield, Dark Shield, and Dark Vortex, you know with certainty that the last spell in the cycle is going to be Light Vortex. You can have your DPS switch charges beforehand and use Bloodlust/Heroism, since nobody (maybe other than some tanks and healers) will be switching colors during that last spell (you know, since you will already be the right color).

The special abilities are the biggest thing about the fight, but there are a few other that you need to keep an eye for. The Twins have a raid-wide aura that damages people of the opposite color - so your raid will be taking damage every few seconds. The other thing is the floating balls of concentrated energy, floating in the room. People who collect spheres of the same color as theirs will get a Powering Up buff (that has no effect by itself), while people that touch spheres of the opposite color will cause a short-ranged AoE explosion. 100 stacks of Powering Up (which is also gained if you successfully absorb Vortex pulses) grant a +100% damage buff.

Achievements

Salt and Pepper (10 player) - This is really a DPS race. You will need around 5,000 DPS per person, tanks and healers not included (the number is very rough, as many things can set if off). Proper collection of the floating orbs and perfect performance during the special abilities will be key for this achievement.

Comments

Comment by Frubara

Comment by Yizelin

I've said it before and i'll say it again... this fight is like a (pick one) boss fight in Ikaruga because of the mechanic which is an amazing game. Very fun fight, and of course nice guide :)

edit: we also use dedicated catchers (2 on each side, i'm usually on the light side wearing a dark essence for example) to catch opposite colored balls so that some of our... less attentive individuals don't get hit in the back of the head with the wrong color.

Comment by Fingulfin

on 2009-09-04T14:04:04-05:00

Few notes:

The bosses hit like girls (get it? get it?). You can have one tank take them both.

For simplicities sake, my raid likes to have everyone be the same color at the start. This way, we can all switch at once when our raid leader calls a switch in vent.

Once your raid is familiar with the encounter, most raid-wide damage can be avoided. In ten man, you can two heal it and in 25 man you can 3-4 heal it without any problems. As a side note, the first time I downed these suckers in ten man I solo healed it.

Much like Jaraxxus, this fight sounds alot more complicated than it is. I believe this fight is Blizz's way of rewarding groups who can down the faction champs xD

Comment by ArgentSun

on 2009-09-04T14:10:54-05:00

Do you know how their Dual Wield works?

Comment by Fingulfin

on 2009-09-04T14:21:08-05:00

IE Power of the Twins? That crap happens when you alllow them to collect 100 Stacks of the "Ballsy Buff". Its sort of a mini-enrage. They start attacking faster, hitting harder for 15 seconds... Each attack they do during the 15 seconds adds a stack to their attack speed. No clue what the "dual wield" part of the tooltip means... Maybe they start using an offhand, allowing them to get more stacks faster?

While it sounds mean, its nothing to fret about... As long as people are collecting balls, it shouldn't ever happen anyway.

Comment by bloodpaly

on 2009-09-04T14:25:56-05:00

When I did this fight the first week, I never noticed a damage aura, but I did it again yesterday, and there was definately a damage aura ticking for like 4.5k every few seconds. Both times I have done this fight were on 10man.

Comment by Fingulfin

on 2009-09-04T14:28:57-05:00

Darkbane has this aura, and Lightbane has this aura. The first few days of them being available, neither of them used it... Blizzard quickly hotfixed it though. The reason I was able to solo heal this the first week was because the auras were broken ;)

Comment by Hungryshadow

on 2009-09-04T14:44:11-05:00

Do you know how their Dual Wield works?

It's definitely tankable by one tank. At least on Normal. They do hit like pussies. One tank died last week due to not getting healed during the AoE blast, and the other tank just picked the other up and tanked it easily.

Comment by Stromwerk

on 2009-09-04T14:56:46-05:00

There deffinetly is a damage aura and after whatching some vids and checking combat logs I can say it does 1.5k dmg/sec on 10 man normal nad 4.5k on 25man normal.Last night was my first kill and we had a bit of a hard time even if we did the color switching perfectly. One of the tanks died constantly and after checking his combat log he saw some 40k dmg there which killed him. From what I remember the spell was twin spike but they only used it once shielded (the non shielded one used it on the tank). The tank used something to absorb it and after a few tries we did it. ...and then there was Anub (my guild is a bit of a fail sometimes xD)

Comment by ArgentSun

on 2009-09-04T20:43:04-05:00

Darkbane has this aura, and Lightbane has this aura. The first few days of them being available, neither of them used it... Blizzard quickly hotfixed it though. The reason I was able to solo heal this the first week was because the auras were broken ;)

Thanks a chunk for those!

Comment by messoria

on 2009-09-04T21:52:55-05:00

This fight is quite easy; healers don't have that much to heal, tanks barely need to move. It's all up to having non-retarded DPS, pretty much. We downed the champions on our first try and kept dying to the Val'kyrs due to people not reacting quickly enough/not reacting at all to Twin's Pact and Vortex.

Bonus tip: if you are a Blood Elf, healers included, stand next to the Val'kyr casting Twin's Pact with Arcane Torrent ready. Just in case; I had do it twice myself as a priest due to people not coordinating their interrupts, or not interrupting at all...

Another tip for healers, if you are raid healing, you can easily stand in the middle of the room and get in range of both groups.

If you're going for the speed kill, tell your ranged DPS to pick up the orbs; often when there's an instant cast coming up in the rotation, people can afford to move and power up a bit. I'd call Bloodlust if: 1) the special has just gone off; 2) a high DPS is charged.

So yeah, being an Ikaruga lover, this fight was a welcome change, and quite rewarding when finished :)

Comment by westrock2000

on 2009-09-05T02:37:01-05:00

healers don't have that much to heal

The encounter was ninja buffed this week (the 2nd week on live)...your healers will have plenty to do, in 25 man at least.

We were ready to steamroll though this again this week and we got in there and us healers are like wtf is going on o.O

The tanks take about as much damage as everyone else, so I just kept Shields on them and spammed Prayer of Healing (as Disc) among all the groups and everything went ok.

Still a failry straight forward encounter, but the new damage aura is extremely noticable.

Comment by westrock2000

on 2009-09-05T02:43:55-05:00

Oh also, World of Logs incorrectly attributes the encounter mechanics as Power Word: Shield to Disc priests, so dont be surprised if your Disc Priest shows to have done 50%-60% of all the healing in the encounter. The data is wrong. This week I showed to have 45% of all healing and 92% of my healing was attributed to Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis.

The issue is with Blizzard not assigning "absorbs" to an owner in the combat log (something they are promising to fix). So most of the parsers that calculate Disc priests shields try to make very calculated guesses. But with the combat log being flooded with absorbs in this encounter it makes nearly impossible to accuratly estimate.